July - September 2023 - Fat Donald Won't Go Away

Like herpes - hard to get rid of.

It’s the gold bars, stupid! 

NEW: 9/29/23: For once it’s time to focus on the Democratic Party and the sins (alleged) of one high-ranking official. That would be U.S. Senator Robert “Gold Bars” Menendez of New Jersey. 

First, since the blogger is not a moron, he will not commence shouting, “Lock him up!” until evidence is gathered, the jury impaneled, the case heard, and only then if Menendez is convicted. 

(The blogger is willing to wager that he will.)

 

Second, the blogger is not going to complain about how the Department of Justice is being “weaponized” against the innocent. 

Finally, when almost every important news media organization is reporting on the senator’s alleged crimes, the blogger is not going to lambast the “Mainstream Media,” or “MSM,” in Trumpian parlance, or the “Fake News” folks. 

As he says, the blogger is not a moron. He will consider the evidence and…wow…that’s a lot of gold bars!! 

The New York Times has describeed what it calls a “brazen plot,” with the senator and his wife, Nadine, busy at “furtive dinners,” sending “encrypted messages,” and peddling influence, to help the Egyptian government get what it wanted – particularly military aid, despite a truly horrendous human rights record. According to the Times, another plotter, speaking with an Egyptian general, referred to Sen. Menendez as “our man.” 

As a kind of “corruption bonus,” authorities allege that the senator used his influence to aid two New Jersey businessmen under separate criminal investigation, one for defrauding Medicare. 

In return for such efforts, participants in the alleged bribery scheme offered Senator and Mrs. Menendez such perks as: 

ü Checks for large sums of moola, including one for $10,000, sent to a consulting firm run by Mrs. Menendez. 

ü A job for Nadine, where she would “perform little or no work,” and still be paid handsomely. 

ü Cash, and lots of it! A search of the Menendez home in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. and a deposit box in Nadine’s name turned up $550,000, with loot tucked into clothing pockets or stashed in boxes in closets. Some of that cash is said to bear the DNA and fingerprints of co-conspirators linked to the Egyptian government. 

ü *And: $100,000 in gold bars!

Look, this isn’t complicated. If you think Hunter Biden was using his family name to get a paid position on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy holding company, you’re correct. But you can’t be a lunkhead and forget (or ignore) the truth: that President Trump sent Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine, to find evidence of corruption – hopefully involving the entire Biden family. 

If evidence was there, we still haven’t seen it. Whereas we know that Rudy’s two helpers in Ukraine, Lev Parnas, and Igor Fruman, have already been inducted into the club that Sen. Menendez and his wife are soon likely to join. 

That is: The Convicted Felons Club. 

In a similar way, we must take off any partisan blinders when we consider the legal woes of the former president. 

Currently, he’s innocent. Still, there are piles of metaphorical gold bars in the Mar-a-Lago closets. You can see them for yourself if you open your eyes and consider the proof. Evidence is evidence, and having the audacity to talk about it, either in the Menendez case, or the Mar-a-Lago documents case, or the Georgia election fraud case, isn’t “Fake News.” It’s news about evidence. 

If the Department of Justice indicts a variety of suspects, based on a pile of gold bars in a closet, that’s not “weaponization.” That’s the rule of law, and us ordinary folks, who will never have the pleasure of stacking gold bars in our closets – and wouldn’t take bribes, even if we were offered – are better served when the people who do take bribes (or try to steal elections) are held accountable.

 

* 

SPEAKING OF RUDY, Mr. Giuliani is in trouble (again) after he refused (again) to turn over documents or pay $236,000 in legal fees to two plaintiffs in a defamation case, which he has already lost by default. In that case, Rudy was lying about the two plaintiffs – claiming they helped steal the 2020 election. That’s not “Fake News” from CNN. It’s the free press reporting. 

Nor is it “Fake News” when Axios reports that Mike Lindell’s rights were not violated (according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eight District) when the F.B.I. seized his phone – after applying for and receiving a search warrant. It’s not even “weaponization” of the Department of Justice. 

Lindell is allegedly involved in the plot to keep Trump in office, even after he lost the 2020 election. Among Mike’s great ideas: Having Don declare martial law and pretty much say, “F.U.” to voters. 

(Even Trump lovers should be able to sniff out the danger there.)

 

Last, but not least, it’s not commie Democrats or liberal pedophiles on the prowl, if ABC News reports that another witness in the Mar-a-Lago documents case (Trump’s personal secretary in the White House, Molly Michael – and until recently an employee in good standing at his Florida home) says she was told to, at best, fudge the truth when speaking to federal investigators. 

We know beyond any doubt that Mr. Trump was hoarding dozens of boxes of material (some of it highly classified) at his Mar-a-Lago home. We have pictures to prove that truth, taken by Trump’s own employees. Yet the former president is alleged to have told Ms. Michael, if she were asked, to say, “You don’t know anything about the boxes.” Other witnesses can back her up – citing similar requests. And employees who did lie about the boxes are in a serious legal fix. 

Walt Nauta, for one, has almost no chance of avoiding conviction, after blatantly lying to investigators. He said he didn’t know anything about any boxes – but they have him on security film – um – moving all kinds of boxes – the ones he claimed he knew nothing about. Now Nauta’s only hope in court is that Trump is reelected in 2024, and grants him a pardon for his sins.

 

* 

FINALLY, we have more gold bars piled up in New York, in the tax fraud case involving the former president, his family members, and top executives at the Trump Organization. As you may know (but won’t if all you watch is Fox News) a judge ruled recently that the Manhattan District Attorney has already proven the key to the case. There was tax fraud, and the full civil case can now move to trial. 

In the meantime, Donald and his kin will be protected in their legal rights by swarms of high-priced lawyers – although not always the best high-priced lawyers, as we have sadly learned. We know that his silly supporters will continue to donate their hard earned cash to the cause, so that Donald doesn’t have to pay all of his lawyers himself. His lawyers will then continue to file every kind of delaying motion they can think of. Five of his attorneys were fined $7,500 each, essentially for gumming up the courts, using legal arguments that had already been rejected. Those fines, and, if I read the story right, similar fines against two of Trump’s sons (but not Barron), and two of Trump Organization executives, will be appealed. 

Any defendant has the right to appeal, under our system of justice – assuming that defendant has deep enough pockets to keep delaying a trial, or contesting results. 

The fact is, “We the People” benefit any time corruption can be proven against any of our elected officials – or against business crooks. Sen. Menendez escaped conviction in 2017, when prosecutors in another case couldn’t prove the charges, and the jury deadlocked. (This blogger thought he was guilty, then, too.) During that trial there were allegations that the senator helped a rich donor sneak “Juliani,” a Brazilian stripper and one of the donor’s several mistresses, into this country. 

Six years later, it appears that Menendez is dead meat – and it would be nice if his party could force him to vacate his Senate seat. 

So, here’s how it goes: 

If Rudy Giuliani defames two low-level Georgia polling officials, and claims they helped steal tens of thousands of votes – and evidence shows they didn’t, and he loses in court – that’s a plus in the column labeled “JUSTICE.” 

 

$61 million in bribes. 

Here in Ohio, when former Speaker of the House Larry Householder took his cut out of $61 million in bribes – and got caught – and convicted – and sentenced to 240 months in prison – that was a gain for every Ohioan. 

That also goes in the JUSTICE column. 

No legal system is without imperfection. No human system can ever be. In the courts, judges, jury members, witnesses, lawyers, plaintiffs, and defendants all introduce a level of unpredictability. But this is the best we can do – and we have been on a “winning streak” of later, as far as American justice is concerned. If, in the New York fraud case, Eric Trump pleads the Fifth more than 500 times, an observer might consider that suspicious. But Eric, or this blogger, should he ever find himself in a similar situation, cannot be forced to incriminate himself, under the Fifth Amendment. 

That too, is JUSTICE. 

In a straight civil case, however, which is what the fraud case against members of the Trump family and the Trump Organization is, jury members may infer, if a defendant pleads the Fifth, that that defendant is admitting to claims against them – and may rule in favor of the State of New York. 

Dad, of course, was also required to give a deposition in the case, and he too took the Fifth hundreds of times. 

Still: that’s JUSTICE. 

You can lay this out with all kinds of examples, where JUSTICE prevails. Here are a few of the blogger’s favorite examples:

 

:JUSTICE

1. Fox News defames Dominion Voting Systems, saying Dominion made the rigging of the 2020 election possible. Fox can’t back up its claims, and Dominion proves that even Fox hosts making those claims doubted they were true. Dominion wins $787.5 million in damages. 

2. Donald Trump defames E. Jean Carroll, calling her a liar, because she says he raped her in a department store dressing room, back in 1996. A jury in a civil case awards Ms. Carroll $5 million. 

3. Mr. Trump’s lawyers file a motion, arguing that the cash award to Ms. Carroll should be overturned, because the jury (in the civil case) found Trump guilty of “sexual assault,” not rape. That’s what lawyers are supposed to do: They try to present the best defense for their client/s. 

4. The judge rules that “sexual assault” and “rape” are so similar in meaning that it is not worth quibbling. He tosses the motion. 

5. Mr. Trump defames Caroll again, in the wake of her first trial. She sues him again, this time for $10 million. 

6. Trump’s lawyers appeal that decision – and they lose again. A second trial will be coming. 

7-9. It’s a good day any time a pedophile is convicted of his, her or “they” crimes (assuming the abuser is transgender). That would include a Democratic mayor, an Evangelical youth pastor now serving 45 years in prison, or a cult leader, who abused college women, now looking at six decades in prison. 

(By the way, QAnon, which holds that only liberals are pedophiles, is nonsense.)

 

10. Purdue Pharma, which aggressively marketed opioid painkillers, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of mostly young Americans, despite the known dangers of addiction from the products they sold, agrees to pay $8 billion in damages. 

10. McDonalds franchises are fined a total of $200,000 for violating child labor laws, including employing (but not paying) 10-year-old workers. 

10. Meat packing companies are also fined for employing underage (and undocumented) children. One poor teenager has his arm all but ripped off after it gets caught in a conveyer belt. 

11. Trump University is required to return $25 million to former students, who described course offerings as worthless, and the whole operation as a scam. That’s an old one, but it still amuses me. 

12. A woman who sends ricin to then-President Trump and police officials in Texas gets sentenced to 262 months in prison. 

13. The El Paso, Texas killer, a white supremacist who murdered 23 people in a Walmart store, gets 90 consecutive life sentences. 

14. A man in Las Vegas is convicted for voting twice in the 2020 election. And don’t you know: He voted for Trump. 

Both times!

 

15. A recount, demanded in 2020, by Team Trump, in Wisconsin (which they had ever right to ask for, and for which they paid $3 million, is granted. Yay, Team Trump lawyers!!! 

It’s a rare win! 

16. That same recount shows Joe Biden gains votes in Wisconsin. 

17. A jury convicts Trump pal Steve Bannon for “contempt of Congress,” that is, refusing to respond to a summons to testify. 

18. A judge rules that former White House economic advisor Peter Navarro must also stand trial for refusing to comply with a Congressional subpoena. (Both Bannon and Navarro were suspected of knowing details about the plot to steal the 2020 election.) 

19. A California many is freed from prison after 28 years, when fresh DNA evidence proves police got the wrong man.

(Obviously everything prior to that, in his case, would go under “INJUSTICE.”)

 

20. Finally, at least 826 January 6 rioters have been convicted or have pled guilty for trying to stop the counting of the electoral votes, and help Donald Trump gain a second term that he failed to win. 

21. All had legal representation if they wanted. Some chose bench trials (letting the judge determine the merits of the case.) 

22. Some chose to go to trial before juries. 

23. A handful of defendants decided to represent themselves in court, which every defendant has a right to do. 

24. Defense lawyers presented letters from family members and friends of defendants, asking judges for leniency, and citing the good deeds of said defendants. 

25. In cases where violence had occurred, injured police officers, or the wives of officers who had committed suicide later, were allowed to present “victim statements,” explaining how crimes had harmed their families and themselves. 

Those sentenced to the longest terms in prison include neo-Nazis (#348 on the list I keep of all the rioters), those who battered police with various weapons, including hockey sticks (#154), flag poles and crutches (#568), and those threatening civil war (#706) – which would have meant killing countless other Americans. 

And that, however imperfectly, is how the American justice system works.

SCROLL DOWN FOR NEWS FROM JULY 1, ON.

July 1, 2023: A new month begins – a clean slate of sorts, on which Donald J. Trump can continue to write the story of his legacy. 

First, we learn that June ended with Fox News agreeing to settle a lawsuit against Trump apologist Tucker Carlson for $12 million. According to former Carlson producer, Abby Grossberg, her boss made her job a “living hell.” Most pertinent to our larger story: Grossberg alleged that Carlson, Maria Bartiromo, and Fox News lawyers had pressured her to give false testimony during a deposition, regarding the Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against the leading cable news network. 

In other words, Fox and its hosts had been lying about the “Stolen Election” of 2020. They knew it – but their clueless viewers didn’t (and still don’t) – and absent evidence to back up their claims, Fox leaders panicked. They tried to get Grossberg to lie about what she knew and aid in a coverup. When she balked, she was fired. As more and more evidence supporting her claims was revealed, she decided to sue. 

So add another $12 million to the cost of lying for Fox News.

Fox gets another bill for spreading "Stolen Election" lies.

___ 

 

7/4/23: If you have been paying attention during the Trump Era, you no doubt understand. Fat Donald has only the most tenuous grip on American history. And he doesn’t know sh*t about the U.S. Constitution. 

On this most American of all holidays, however, the Republican Party commits an embarrassing faux pas.

(I didn’t notice the mistake, myself, at first, but the one star in the blue field is obvious, if you look. That means they’re showing the flag of Liberia – which for those of you who don’t know, is a country on the east coast of Africa, founded in 1823, by freed slaves shipped “home” from the United States.

 

* 

IN THE MEANTIME, what July Fourth in America would be complete without a mass shooting or two. Or twenty-two. Over the long weekend, gunfire erupted in at least seventeen states, leaving twenty dead and a hundred other Americans, of all races, creeds, colors, genders, sizes, shapes, and ages, wounded. 

In Philadelphia, a shooter armed with an AR-15 style rifle, wearing body armor, and concerned about “the loss of freedoms,” roamed a main street, randomly shooting other Americans. (Five killed, four wounded). 

In May, [the suspect] shared posts from pro-gun groups supporting former President Donald Trump and the Second Amendment. In June, he shared a mocking video of a speech by President Joe Biden and added his view that Biden was trying to “take our arms.”

 

He posted on the same day, “The only thing more terrifying than blindness is being the only one who can see.”

 

We don’t post the names of killers, or alleged killers; but according to right-wingers, every killing in a “Democrat-run city” is the Democrats’ fault. 

Whereas the mayor of the city says “ghost gun” confiscations in Philadelphia have increased 300% in the last three years. These guns can be bought in kits, online, with no background check required, just as the NRA has always wanted – and Republicans have always wanted, ever since they knew the NRA and gun companies would give them fat campaign donations, and help keep them in office. 

Other mass shootings occurred in Fort Worth, Texas, where gunmen opened fire on hundreds gathered for a block party (three dead, eight wounded), Fort Lauderdale, Florida (five wounded), Shreveport, Louisiana (four dead, seven injured), Truman, Minnesota (four wounded), Saint Ann, Missouri (likely a domestic violence incident, with three killed, and one child wounded), and Wichita, Kansas (nine wounded when a gunman opened fire in a nightclub). 

That’s seven examples. You can look up the other fifteen yourself. Anyway, “thoughts and prayers,” as the gun lovers like to say.

 

Finally, it’s not a “mass shooting,” but it’s a typical story in America today. In Tampa, Florida, a July 4 argument over jet skis ends in gunfire (one person dead, a 7-year-old boy, one wounded). 

The shooter is on the loose – “proving” once again that more guns make us safer – and isn’t Florida’s “permitless carry” law, which went into effect just three days before, the perfect answer to all the gun violence in that state and every other bloody corner of this land. 

The boy was killed when his grandfather tried to put him in his truck for safety, and covered his head with a hand. A bullet passed through grandpa’s hand and killed the child, Yitzian Torres Garcia.

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7/5/23: We have two “big” stories to cover today. Let’s see how the media handles them. First, someone left a baggie of cocaine in a storage locker, in a public area inside the White House, where visitors enter. Right-wing reporters are on the trail – no, not that trail – intent on proving… 

Who knows what. 

Fat Donald, the Emperor of Mar-a-Lago, has a few thoughts he wants to share, despite the fact investigation is ongoing. 

Fat D? 

Fat D doesn’t do facts. 

On Truth Social, he lets rip: 

Does anybody really believe that the COCAINE  found in the West Wing of the White House, very close to the Oval Office, is for the use of anyone other than Hunter & Joe Biden. But watch, the Fake News Media will soon start saying that the amount found was “very small,” & it wasn’t really COCAINE, but rather common ground up Aspirin, & the story will vanish. Has deranged Jack Smith, the crazy, Trump hating Special Prosecutor, been seen in the area of the COCAINE? He looks like a crackhead to me!

 

Here we have a classic of Trumpian “thought.” We have random capitalization, as if supporters are too dumb to notice the word “COCAINE.” We have the absence of evidence to support his fable. And we have the gratuitous insult of Jack Smith. 

If Smith looks like a “crackhead to me,” as Trump says, I’m going to try my hand at responding in kind. 

“To me,” Fat Donald looks like a sea lion stuffed into an expensive suit, with a really bad hairpiece pasted to his head. 

The second story, which the folks at right-wing news chose mostly to overlook, involved heat records falling globally. According to real scientists, not internet dopes, June 2023 was the hottest June ever recorded. This was only slightly worse than May 2023, which was the third hottest ever, and the hottest ever in Canada (not to mention the seventh driest). That, in turn, has led to record-setting forest fires – with a record 27.7 million acres in Canada already reduced to ashes. And if you haven’t noticed, smoke from massive fires to our north has turned U.S. skies orange and made outdoor activity much less enjoyable across much of this country. 

(That much burning would be equivalent to torching the entire state of West Virginia, including Joe Manchin.)

 

Then, to top it all off, on July 3, the world experienced its hottest day around the globe, ever recorded. 

That record lasted for 24 hours, with July 4, eclipsing the “old” mark. And that record lasted … until today. 

July 5 is now the hottest day, globally, ever. 

 

FUN FACT: Another Trump lawyer bites the legal dust, and goes to the Big Courtroom in the Sky, metaphorically. 

L. Lin Wood, so happy to toss out wild claims of a “Stolen Election” in 2020, has agreed to let his Georgia license to practice law – or malpractice, as it were – lapse. This saved him the embarrassment of being disbarred, and in return, the State Bar of Georgia has agreed to drop disciplinary charges. 

Like so many other misfit members of Team Trump’s legal crew, L. Lin liked to issue statements about voter fraud having been committed, which he never managed to back up with facts. 

Now he just has to hope he doesn’t get indicted. 

(The blogger is willing to bet $10 that this summer, Wood will.)

 

FUN FACT #2: Speaking of the ineptitude of Team Trump lawyers, in another “Stolen Election” story, former Arizona Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers, a Republican, told CNN that he had sat for four hours with investigators recently and answered questions about efforts by Team Trump to get him to wrap Arizona’s electoral votes in a bow and gift them to Donald J. Trump in 2020. 

What proof, Kaitlan Collins inquired, did Rudy Giuliani and all the other fine legal minds working for the Orange God have to offer to convince him to overturn the results of an entire state election? 

Bowers said he would have required massive evidence before he would had made any effort to reverse the result of the Arizona vote. What he received, he laughed repeatedly, were “a couple of letters” from “legal professors, a term paper from one of my colleagues, on this…this ‘theory of law,’ and several things that were entertaining,” plus a stack of irrelevant paperwork. He said, “tongue in cheek,” as he put it, that Team Trump had offered him “proof” of voter fraud.

 

FUN FACT #3: Did we just mention Rudy? Mr. Giuliani is having another bad month in court. Having been named in a defamation suit by two Georgia lawmakers, whom he accused of stealing tens of thousands of votes in the 2020 election, the first hammer shot to his pate lands today. 

The judge in the case rules that he must pay the lawyers for the two plaintiffs, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, $89,172.50, because he failed to adequately provide all relevant documents in the case. 

Like…you almost think Rudy might be trying to hide something.

___ 

 

7/6/23: Some records may never be broken. For example, Cy Young’s total number of wins as a pitcher (511) in the major leagues. 

As for global heat records, for the fourth consecutive day, the world was hotter than ever on July 6. 

Climate change, as they say.

___ 

 

7/7/23: Well, Joe Biden did it again. Added jobs to the U.S. economy, we mean. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 209,000 jobs were added in June, described as the economy “cooling down,” which may help ease inflationary pressures. 

Did you know that even before COVID-19 hit, in the first 37 full months of his presidency, that Trump averaged only 185,838 jobs added per month? 

Well, now you do. And you don’t have to be a dope. You can go look it up. 

The May report was revised slightly, lower, to 306,000 jobs added, so, with numbers still subject to revision (as per normal practice) we see that Mr. Biden has added 1,669,000 jobs in the first half of 2023. 

Or 278,167 jobs per month.

 

* 

JOBS? Did someone just mention jobs? Down in Florida, jobs are plentiful. Workers are not. Governor Ron DeSantis, who really, really feels the itch to be President of the United States, has passed legislation to penalize employers who hire the undocumented – and so many of the undocumented, who helped fuel the Florida economy, have picked up their belongings and headed elsewhere. 

This has left many Florida businesses struggling to fill jobs, including Mar-a-Lago, where Team Trump has asked for permission to hire 111 temporary immigrant workers, under the H-2 visa program. 

In fact, between 2017 and 2022, when the F.B.I. raided Trump’s gaudy Florida club/home, Donald asked permission to hire 380 short-term temporary immigrant workers, at the same time he was leaving top secret government documents scattered all about.

Trump can afford to live here, and hide classified documents.
But he can't afford to hire American workers?

 

* 

IN OTHER NEWS, Rudy Giuliani’s bad streak in court continues. He learns today that he is a near-lock to lose his license to practice law in the District of Columbia. 

He has been found to have pushed a “Stolen Election” narrative despite the absence of evidence to support his claims – and by that, we mean Team Trump’s equally fictitious claims, too. The D.C. Board of Professional Responsibility has issued a preliminary filing, regarding Giuliani’s efforts to get the 2020 vote in Pennsylvania overturned. His court filings, according to a three-member disciplinary panel were “frivolous,” and “destructive.” 

 

“Unparalleled in its destructive purpose.” 

After a week of hearings, the panel concluded, “He claimed massive election fraud but had no evidence of it,” which they explain in a 38-page decision. 

“By prosecuting that destructive case Mr. Giuliani, a sworn officer of the Court, forfeited his right to practice law.” 

Once, after 9/11, Giuliani had been a pillar of strength, “America’s Mayor,” having helped New York City and this great nation rebound from a horrific attack. Now? “The misconduct here sadly transcends all his past accomplishments,” the panel concluded. “It was unparalleled in its destructive purpose and effect. He sought to disrupt a presidential election and persists in his refusal to acknowledge the wrong he has done.” 

As Politico notes, the disciplinary report continued: 

His hyperbolic claims of election fraud and the core thesis of the Pennsylvania litigation were utterly false, and recklessly so. Mr. Giuliani’s rash overstatement claiming that the election was stolen had no evidence to support it.

 

Respondent … commenced litigation without evidence that its core factual claim was true.

 

The hearing [before the panel, which lasted several days] clearly and convincingly disclosed that there was no such evidence: Respondent based the Pennsylvania litigation only on speculation, mistrust, and suspicion.

 

That’s legalese for: Rudy was full of shit and so was his client, that lying sack of shit, President Donald J. Trump.

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7/9/23: Mr. Blogger is always gratified to see that leading Republicans (including individuals who worked closely with Mr. Trump) eventually come around. Mr. Blogger has been warning for years that Donald is a menace to the U.S. Constitution, and death to the rule of law. Now former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has made clear. He agrees. Asked by a reporter earlier this month what he envisioned, should Trump be reelected, Christie said this: 

“He’d be much worse. When he first got in, he was scared. He would bluster a lot, he didn’t know what government was like and didn’t know how to manoeuvre it. He would be a lot more of a problem as president this time. He’s about increasing his own power and lashing out at those people and institutions that he’s felt wronged by.”

 

Then, on Sunday, we had this from Utah Gov. Spencer Cox. Asked, during an appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation, if any of the six governors running for the party nomination could beat Donald Trump, he responded: 

I hope so. I like governors. I think governors are great and have real experience. The great thing about governors is we have to get stuff done, right? We can’t just do the performance thing. … Potholes aren’t partisan. You have to do those kind of things.

  

And I think we have lots of amazing choices, and I’m really hopeful that we can turn the page and try something else. Someone who can win, which I think is important, and I think any of those governors could win and I certainly hope we’ll give them a chance.

 

On a different channel, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota was asked by Chuck Todd if he would ever do business with a man like Donald Trump. 

“I don’t think so,” he responded. 

Todd asked, simply, “Why?” 

Burgum hesitated briefly. “I just think it’s too important…that you are judged by the company you keep…No. I wouldn’t.” 

Then we can throw in an ad which is running for a pro-Mike Pence political action group. President Trump, the group notes, was “an apologist for thugs and dictators” while in office. “America doesn’t stand with thugs and dictators. We confront them,” a narrator says as footage shows Donald playing nice with the likes of Kim Jong-un. “Or at least we used to.” 

As USA Today explains, “Asked about the ad by reporters Thursday evening, Pence said ‘I never had any illusions about Vladimir Putin.’ He pointed to the 2016 vice presidential debate when he called Putin a ‘small and bullying leader.’”

 

FUN FASCIST FACT: A brief clip surfaced recently (or at least the blogger just saw it for the first time), showing Trump behind the scenes, talking to one of the Fox & Friends shills. He’s asked, is it possible an invite to Kim Jong-up might be in the works, to visit the White House. Clearly enamored, the President of the United States, seems enthusiastic about such a meeting. “He speaks and his people sit up in attention. I want my people to do the same.” 

In North Korea, you sit up at attention, or risk death.

 

* 

“More beachfront property., actually.”

 AS FOR DONALD, himself, the former president, and likely future felon, has been talking about climate change/not climate change again. Which means: Sounding idiotic! At a rally in Iowa, he admits that, yes, the oceans may be rising – although he’s been spending his time lately minimizing the rise. “The ocean’s rising over the next 300 years, that’s a risk,” he jokes. “Creates more beachfront property, actually. That’s the way you have to view it,” he continues. 

Yeah, if you’re incredibly stupid. 

Many in the crowd laugh or give a cheer. 

It was on to Las Vegas next, where Trump told an appreciative audience – news flash – that in Nevada they don’t have an ocean! 

In another misguided attempt to mock the risks of climate change, Trump tried for this comparison:

 

Florida is easier than other places, you have the ocean and you have the sun. There’s something about that that works.

 

But you have the sun too, but you don’t have the ocean...maybe someday you’ll have the ocean, you never know.

 

Sure, it could happen! Since Las Vegas is 2,001 feet above sea level, you’d have to watch Florida drown, for sure. Almost all of the Mississippi River Valley would be part of a new arm of the Atlantic, and all of us in Ohio would be doing the dog paddle, since the highest point in our state is only 1,549 feet above sea level. 

Good god. 

Donald is a clueless f**k.

___ 

 

7/10/23: The hits keep coming at Fox News, where Tucker Carlson used to work. Ray Epps is now filing a defamation suit against the network and, until recently, it’s top-rated liar – I mean, “host.” 

Epps, if you haven’t heard (because you were not dumb enough to watch Carlson nightly at 8:00) was supposedly an F.B.I. plant in the crowd that attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021. (Epps was filmed outside the Capitol that day, and also filmed the night before. On both occasions, he could be seen firing up Trump fans, calling on “patriots” to march. But he has never been charged as a rioter and Carlson suggested – on twenty different shows – that there was “no rational explanation” why Epps wasn’t charged. Unless! Unless, he was a government plant. In fact, Carlson, now show-less because he lied even too often for Fox News, said last week that the crowd on January 6 was “filled with federal agents.” Epps being only the most famous in right-wing land. Epps soon became the target of death threats. He lost his business and home, and he and his wife had to flee for safety in their mobile home. 

So, why hasn’t Epps been charged? There is no evidence yet to show he ever entered the Capitol Building. Nor is there any film showing him attacking police lines. He urged others on, for sure, but as violence spiraled out of control, he tried to calm the crowd. The fairly simple explanation is that what he did do would be covered by free speech protections, under the First Amendment. 

But Tucker didn’t care. It served his purposes (boosting his audience and pay) to portray Epps as a demon in a patriotic crowd. See! President Trump’s incendiary words didn’t stir the mob! Epps’s incendiary words – yeah – they did. 

Epps’s lawyers are now planning to file a defamation suit against Carlson and Fox. And, as we know, Fox has already been pulverized more than once in court. (See: July 1, 2023, and Abby Grossberg, above.) 

(See also: 4/18/23 – Fox News gets hit for $787.5 million in a defamation suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems.)

FUN FACT: Team Trump player Steve “I Got a Pardon, You Didn’t” Bannon has been ordered by a judge to pay his lawyers $480,487.87 they billed him for his losing fight to ignore a congressional subpoena. 

All Steve got for his efforts (and theirs) was four months in prison – a sentence Bannon continues to fight in the courts – we assume, using new lawyers.

 

FUN FACT #2: With Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis still bumbling along in his effort to close ground with Trump, for the GOP nomination for president in 2024, other Republicans are thinking of entering the race. 

Gov. Brian Kemp, of Georgia – an honest Republican, if nothing else – is considering joining the race. 

So, too, Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia. 

DeSantis’s problem is simple enough. Like Trump, he’s a giant asshole, but he’s not at good at it as the Orange Original.

___

 

7/13/23: This is the 982^nd day since the 2020 election. Yet, in a portion of an upcoming interview on CNN, Ronna McDaniel, the head of the Republican National Committee cannot tell Chris Wallace that Joe Biden won the race fairly. 

True. No recount, including several run by Republicans, has shown any evidence of significant fraud. 

True again. No court, not even Divorce Court, had uncovered voter fraud of any import. 

And, of course, top members of Team Trump are likely, soon, to be indicted for…election fraud. 

Ronna don’t care. Ronna don’t do facts. Not logic, either. When Wallace tried to pin her down, she wriggles like a worm trying to get off a hook. He asks her if Biden is president. She tries to talk about the “process.” 

“I think there were a lot of problems,” she adds. 

Finally, she agrees – sort of -that Biden “ultimately” won the election. “But I don’t think he won it fair. I don’t, I’m not going to say that,” she said.

 

Wallace tries again: “You’re saying you’re not sure, as the Republican Party chair, that he was the legitimately elected president?”

 

“I’m saying there were lots of problems with the 2020 election and we need to fix it going forward,” McDaniel replies.

 

Election denial. Still alive and well. And still stupid.

___ 

 

7/14/23: What’s in the news these days, that the average citizen might have missed? Cocaine was, of course, found in the White House, in an area where hundreds of visitors pass by. This is not good; but right-wingers and Donald Trump himself have insisted that this proves Hunter Biden and Joe Biden and Jill Biden and their dogs have all been snorting daily. This is Team Trump – which means no proof of such claims is ever required. 

Speaking of Hunter, it’s pretty obvious (and has been for years) that he’s a mess, and that he played off his family name to make a pile of dough. 

Still, you have to be in a coma to ignore the grifters of Family Trump. For starters, Donald has filed paperwork to show he’s made almost a billion dollars since getting booted out of the White House. A few of my favorite examples: He was paid at least $2 million for speaking at events hosted by Hak Ja Han Moon and a group she co-founded with her husband Sun Myung Moon, the late leader of the Unification Church. If you went to college in the 70s, you may recall that Rev. Moon claimed to be the new Messiah. He had acolytes on every campus, called “Moonies,” cadging donations. 

Sometimes, for fun, he would order followers to pair up and marry other followers in mass weddings, often individuals they had never met. 

Donald had his fingers in all kinds of pies. He earned $2.5 million to comment on a boxing match – held on the twentieth anniversary of 9/11 – the least respectful way possible to observe the day. Meanwhile, Melania has raked in $1.2 million in speaking fees – which, no doubt, helps her survive having to look upon her lumpy husband every day. In another case, the former president realized he had made a slight error in saying he earned $201 from a golf course he owns in Ireland. He had to revise the figure upward, slightly, to $6.2 million. At first, he claimed he made $5 million from his Doral golf club in Florida. He checked his addition again and got a new answer: $159 million. As for his Truth Social media venture, in 2021, investors were told it would soon be worth $1.7 billion. As of this latest filing, Trump has had to admit his version of Twitter is worth…$25 million. 

We also learn that during another gathering, Donald earned $900,000, charging 90 suckers $10,000 a pop to pose beside him. It would appear that Melania also got $250,000 for attending. 

(At least she’s attractive.)

 

Meanwhile, three golf tournaments sponsored by the new Saudi-backed LIV golf league will be or have been held at Trump courses. This excellent source of loot may help explain why Donald has never been bothered to know that Prince Mohammed bin Salman had Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist critical of the Saudi government, kidnapped and cut to pieces with a bone saw. For the second year in a row, this summer, LIV will hold its championship event at Trump’s Doral course. Or as Rejected-President Trump once explained, “It’s big time and it’s big-time money. It’s unlimited money. They love golf and the Saudis have done a fantastic job.” 

Since our topic today is cults, including the “Moonie” cult, let’s focus on the “Donald Cult” for a moment. The blogger is not a dope. So he can look at political polling and understand what the numbers mean. If the presidential election were held today, Trump could very possibly win. FiveThirtyEight has an average of all the recent polls – and its almost dead even between Biden and Trump. 

RealClearPolitics also has it in a statistical tie. Biden at 43.8% vs. 43.6% for Trump. (I’ve explained this many times, but if you take polls, in aggregate, they are rarely off by more than one or two points. So, I’m not going to bet Trump won’t win a second term in 2024. And I’m not going to deny I’d be happy if he were to be struck down by a meteorite, while playing golf. 

Still, like Rev. Moon, I think it’s clear. Trump loves to boost his own image, to portray himself as the American Messiah. 

On July 4, for instance: he posted this picture on his Truth Social account:

This one is particularly amusing since no one in Trump’s direct line has ever served in uniform. Not one Trump, since Friedrich first landed on these shores in 1885 has fought for the country. 

Not one. 

Then, yesterday, Nick Adams – who labels himself as an “Alpha Male” on Twitter, and calls himself “Trump’s favorite author” – talks incessantly about how we need more alpha males to “Make America Great Again” (or something), posted this:

 

Call me suspicious, Nick, but your post looks homoerotic – kind of like that recent Ron DeSantis TV add that feature buff men in skimpy outfits.

983 days  

since the 2020 election. 

Still no proof in any court in the land that victory was stolen from Trump.

* 

OH, YEAH. By the way, this summer seems to be proving (yet again) that climate change is real, and a growing threat to humanity. The waters off Florida are now the hottest ever recorded – in some places registering a “staggering” 97 degrees, or “bathtub levels.” Hotter waters, of course, help supercharge hurricanes. While Gov. Ron DeSantis works hard to keep anyone from reading books that include gay or lesbian characters, Farmers Insurance, expecting damage claims to continue to grow across the Sunshine State, is planning to pull coverage in some Florida markets. 

So, Floridians, if your home gets flattened by a hurricane this season, and you don’t have insurance, remember, you voted for Trump – who calls climate change a “hoax” – twice. Now you’re stuck with DeSantis. If you’re left with nothing but the foundation to your home, and whatever you can save from the wreckage, well, at least Governor Ron kept you safe from having to share bathrooms with transgender folk. 

They won’t have insurance, either. 

We’ll have more evidence later. Phoenix, Arizona is, of course, always hot. This summer is hotter than ever, and hotter than ever earlier. When I check, a little before eight a.m., Phoenix time, the temperature stands at 96°. It’s expected to climb past 110°, making it the fifteenth consecutive day to top that mark. If forecasters are correct, the city could exceed or hit that same level for twelve more days in succession. That will be the longest streak of 110° days ever recorded. Highs on Saturday and Sunday could top out at 117. But don’t worry. It’s a dry heat.

___

 

7/16/23: Saturday morning, a random shooting in Hampton, Georgia left four Americans dead – because more guns make us safer, if, for example, we are walking down the street and someone opens fire at random. 

In Fargo, North Dakota, just a few hours later, good guys with guns prove unable to stop a bad guy with a gun (possibly an assault rifle). One police officer is killed, two are in critical condition, and two other victims were shot. 

The bad guy was eventually killed. 

In Clermont County, Ohio, guns also kept everyone safer when a father killed his three sons, ages 7, 4 and 3. Then he wounded their mom. Dad was found by police sitting on his front doorstep, and arrested without further bloodshed. 

And sometimes there is no “good guy” with a gun to stop the “bad guy,” with the gun, because there is no bad guy. Sunday, three friends in Manassas, Virginia were passing round a loaded pistol, when one pulled the trigger by mistake and killed his friend. The “shooter” in this case is charged with involuntary manslaughter.

___ 

 

7/19/23: Former Congressman Will Hurd, also running for the GOP nomination for president (he has zero chance) says in an interview that Donald J. Trump did not win the 2020 election. 

True. Not really news. 

He also warns that Trump, if elected again, will be “a threat to our national security,” which this blogger has been saying for seven years.

___ 

 

7/21/23: Mark Esper, President Trump’s former Secretary of Defense appeared on CNN today to express his opinion, regarding his old boss’s third run for the White House. Esper told host Kaitlan Collins, “I said that I wouldn't support Donald Trump. I don't think he’s fit for office because he puts himself first and I think anybody running for office should put the country first.” 

Nor is former GOP nominee for president, Sen. Mitt Romney a fan. “Our party and our country need a nominee with character [not Trump],” he warns, “driven by something greater than revenge and ego [not Trump], preferably from the next generation [definitely not Trump]. Family, friends and campaign donors are the only people who can get a lost-cause candidate to exit the race.”

 

* 

For his part, Trump responds to criticism from former GOP Gov. Chris Christie, who fights (and loses against) weight. It is true, I think, that Christie has no chance to win the nomination for himself. Mr. Maturity, however, sums up current polling this way: “Vivek Ramaswamy is now beating DeSanctimonious,” Trump says in a post on Truth Social. “Christie dead as his stomach band. ‘Aida’ Hutchinson a solid minus 1%. I’m up 44 points!!! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.” 

Trump takes pleasure in spelling Gov. Hutchinson’s first name wrong. Guy has the maturity of a kindergartner.

___ 

 

7/22/23: America’s pharmaceutical companies have only one desire: To make sure we all stay healthier and live longer… 

Allowing them to drain our pocketbooks and bank accounts. 

If you haven’t been mesmerized by tales of Hunter Biden’s laptop, and scandalized by pictures of him having his needs serviced by a prostitute (thanks to the sterling efforts of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene), you may have forgotten entirely about the Inflation Reduction Act. Signed by President Biden, and championed by the Democrats, that new law allowed Medicare to negotiate prices charged on some prescription medicines. It was estimated that this would save the U.S. government $98.5 billion over the next decade, and reduce out-of-pocket costs for many older Americans. 

Or: anathema to Big Pharma. 

Last week, Johnson & Johnson became the latest drugmaker to take Team Biden to court to halt the drug pricing program. Merck, Bristol Myers Squibb and Astellas Pharma  have already filed their own lawsuits, as has the industry’s main trade group, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. 

All agree that allowing the government to negotiate prices is unconstitutional, and communist crap, and Joe Biden has a secret plan to kill all patriotic Americans. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services are scheduled to release prices for the first ten drugs selected under the new law on September 1. 

The question of negotiated pricing may go to the U.S. Supreme Court in the end, and with luck the conservative majority on the court will say, “Screw the sick and they dying,” and agree that Big Pharma can charge us all whatever the market will bear.

___ 

 

7/24/23: It seems almost as if Rejected-President Trump is having some kind of psychotic episode – or episodes. Pundits suspect he knows he’s about to get indicted for the third time. Evidence points to Special Prosecutor gathering proof that Trump conspired with others to steal a 2020 election win. 

There is, however, a chance that the third indictment he apparently fears may come out of Georgia. A state case there is building, and at least 20 Trump allies (and likely Trump himself) are rumored to be targets of that probe. 

On Truth Social, Trump has exploded again and again in the last 48 hours. Today he let rip: “Tremendous Media Censorship going on in the USA. What they don’t cover is almost as bad as how dishonestly they do cover events, people, and ‘things.’ This is a very DARK TIME IN AMERICA!” 

In another blast, he insisted he shouldn’t be arrested because it would be un-American to arrest a former president, but Joe Biden should. 

Joe Biden is the most corrupt President in the history of the United States, which is being undeniably proven in the House of Representatives every single day. With but with all of these horrible revelations and facts, why hasn’t Republican “leadership” in the Senate spoken up and rebuked Crooked Joe Biden and the Radical Left Democrats, Fascists, and Marxists for their criminal acts against our Country, some of them against me. How long does America have to wait for the Senate to ACT?

 

Then he unloaded again – and again! 

Do you think that A.G. Garland, and deranged Jack Smith, understand what we are in the middle of a major political campaign for President of the United States? Have they looked at recent poll numbers? Why didn’t they bring these ridiculous charges years before – Why did they wait to bring them NOW – a virtually unheard of scenario? PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT! ELECTION INTERFERENCE!

 

How many times can Crooked Joe Biden’s DEPARTMENT OF INJUSTICE, TOGETHER WITH THEIR LOCAL DEMOCRAT D.A.’S & A.G.’S, INDICT HIS POLITICAL OPPONENT DURING THE COURSE OF THE CAMPAIGN? DO THEY UNDERSTAND THE DAMAGE BEING DONE TO AMERICA? IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE. WE MUST STOP THESE “MONSTERS” FROM FURTHER DESTROYING OUR COUNTY!

 

Another Trump classic, Sunday, read (and we are not making this up) 

Blah blah blah blah blah bullshit bullshit bullshit blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah bullshit bullshit bullshit blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah bullshit bullshit bullshit blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah bullshit bullshit bullshit blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah bullshit bullshit bullshit blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah bullshit bullshit bullshit blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah bullshit bullshit bullshit blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

___ 

 

7/25/23: Today seemed like the day Trump might get indicted by Special Prosecutor Jack Smith again. 

No news to report. 

But Fatso from Mar-a-Lago is still losing his sh*t. Today he “truthed” on Truth Social: 

So, let’s get this straight? The Democrats SLIMEBALLS in Congress, then headed by Crazy Nancy Pelosi, Impeached me over a PERFECT PHONE CALL (I won!), and are now Indicting me over their continuing, illegal, and long running Witch Hunt, but Crooked Joe Biden, who has stolen and extorted millions of dollars, won’t be Impeached or Indicted by a very kind, friendly, and politically correct Republican Congress. Gee, that seems very fair to me? MAKE AMERICAN GREAT AGAIN!!!

___ 

 

7/26/23: The myth of the “Stolen Election” takes another in a lengthy line of hits. Rudy Giuliani is forced to admit that he made false statements about two Georgia poll workers. In the days after the 2020 election, Giuliani, working for Team Trump, claimed Ruby Freeman and her daughter, “Shaye” Moss stole tens of thousands of votes for Joseph Biden, and cost Donald Trump the win in that state. 

Supposedly, they had a hidden “suitcase” of votes that they pulled out when no one was looking (except eagle-eyed Trump supporters), and pulled out 18,000 ballots and ran them through the machines three times. 

Or was it eight times? Team Trump couldn’t even get that essential detail right. 

Now, Rudy claims his lies were covered by “free speech,” and he says his defamatory claims did not harm the women – who are suing him. 

As CBS explains, “In his court filing, Giuliani specifically said he ‘does not contest’ that assertions he made about the women – whom he accused of being part of a vote-manipulation scheme in Georgia – ‘were false.’” 

Furthermore, CBS notes, 

“Defendant Giuliani concedes solely for the purposes of this litigation … that Defendant Giuliani made the statements of and concerning plaintiffs,” his filing said. “He does not dispute for the purposes of this litigation, that the statements carry meaning that is defamatory per se.”

 

Who else accused the same two women, on the basis of the same kind of “evidence?” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton stuck that claim in a lawsuit he tried to advance to the U.S. Supreme Court. Fatso from Mar-a-Lago also peddled the same lie and right-wing news outlets spread it far and wide. 

In a head-spinning statement, however, a spokesperson for Mr. Giuliani, who faces legal troubles on multiple fronts, soon insisted that Rudy did not admit his statements were false. He merely agreed not to contest the fact in court. Then he planned to ask for the case to be defamation case to be dismissed. I would predict his chances of that happening are somewhere between zero and nada.

 

* 

THAT’S NOT the only bad news for Team Trump. On Tuesday, Timothy Shea, who helped set up a foundation to collect private money and build the wall with Mexico, is found guilty. He was charged with stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the fund, which raised $25 million. 

Steve Bannon was also charged in the scheme, but Trump handed him a Golden Pardon for reasons unknown. 

Shea has been sentenced to spend the next five years and three months in a federal prison. He must also forfeit $1.8 million dollars, and pay a fine in an equal amount. Two other co-conspirators were previously found guilty and sentenced to jail. 

Only Bannon got to walk,

___

 

7/27/23: The bad news continues to pile up for Donald Trump – although that means it’s good news for America. 

 

A plan to steal the election for him, not to stop it being stolen from him. 

First: Trump’s lawyers (at least the ones not being investigated, like Rudy) met with Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s team. They were told to expect another indictment, this one involving the plot to steal the 2020 election. 

(Wrack up those indictments, Donnie!)

 

Please note, Trump fans. There’s massive evidence to indicate that Trump and his toadies had a plan to steal the election for him, not to stop it being stolen from him. (See, for example: Rudy Giuliani’s and Trump’s lies, 7/26/23.)

  

(Wrack up those indictments, Donnie!)

 

Second, in a move no one saw coming, Smith and his team issued a superseding indictment in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. Trump was hit hard again, with fresh charges of obstruction justice. A new defendant was also added – and charged with trying to destroy evidence, at the request of “the boss” (i.e. Trump). 

As CBS explains, the fresh face in crime (allegedly) is, 

Carlos De Oliveira, a Mar-a-Lago property manager and former valet. He faces one count of altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing an object; one count of corruptly altering, destroying, mutilating or concealing a document, record or other object; and one count of making false statements and representations during a voluntary interview with federal investigators.

 

Trump also gets a 32^nd count of “willful retention of national defense information,” after a war plan he showed around at his place in Bedminster – and then his lawyers couldn’t find – shows up at…Mar-a-Lago. 

As for De Oliveira, he is accused of asking another employee at the Florida club to help him to delete security camera footage, which would help establish a plan to hide materials from federal investigators. 

The short version of what happened (this blogger will read the 66-page superseding indictment later) is as follows: 

June 24, 2022: The Justice Department issues a final grand jury subpoena, asking for the surveillance records, etc. 

June 25, 2022: Walt Nauta (previously charged with obstruction) and De Oliveira go to the security guard booth where surveillance video is displayed, and check out the situation. What’s showing, they wonder??? 

June 27, 2022: De Oliveira takes another Trump employee to a room known as the “audio closet. He asks that employee how long security footage is stored. About 45 days, the second employee guesses. 

De Oliveira says that “the boss” wants the server deleted. According to the indictment, “Trump Employee 4 responded that he would not know how to do that, and that he did not believe that he would have the rights to do that. ... De Oliveira then insisted to Trump Employee 4 that ‘the boss’ wanted the server deleted and asked, ‘What are we going to do?’” 

(Hint to Trump fans: OBSTRUCT JUSTICE!) 

 

January 13, 2023: Federal investigators speak with De Oliveira at his house. They ask him about the movement of boxes of documents, including highly classified  materials, stored at Trump’s Florida club. 

The suspect says he doesn’t know beans about the movement of any boxes, and he never moved any boxes. Not even boxes of Milk Duds. (Okay, I’m just riffing on that joke.) 

Did De Oliveira ever help move boxes, himself, investigators wonder? 

Oh, no, never, he insists. 

Did he know about anyone else moving boxes around – as if in some Mar-a-Lago shell game? 

Nope, he insisted, he “never saw anything.” 

In fact, he had no idea where items (such as the highly classified materials the F.B.I. wanted to retrieve) might have been stored at the club, after Fat Donald reluctantly left the White House – after failing to steal the 2020 election for himself (again: allegedly). 

According to this new indictment, De Oliveira knew exactly where the boxes were because he helped move them when they first arrived at Trump’s  Florida home in January 2021. 

So, Donald gets hit with multiple fresh charges, and both Nauta and De Oliveira find themselves in tight legal jams. 

Third: We know the U.S. economy grew by 2.4% during the second quarter of 2023. Even Fox Business couldn’t ignore such good numbers. “Talk about a strong economy – there goes that recession talk, right?” admitted Fox anchor Cheryl Casone.

 

Fourth: In more good news for the U.S. and our NATO allies, and for the valiant defenders of Ukraine, an amendment proposed by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to a defense spending bill failed spectacularly. 

Greene wanted to cut U.S. funding to NATO and also called for the U.S. to withdraw from the NATO treaty. All 210 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives voted “no,” and were joined by 137 Republican colleagues. Only Greene, and some of the biggest fools in Congress (Rep. Matt Gaetz, Rep. Lauren Boebert), and 80 other GOP lawmakers supported her gambit. Final tally 347 “no,” 83 “yes.” 

Fifth: Republicans wasted precious time this week (which means spending less time doing actual damage to America) by holding committee meetings on UFO’s. Yes. UFO’s! Idiot lawmaker Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) made it clear he thought the government was engaged in a “coverup” to keep proof of alien beings from the general public. 

As Politico explained, Burchett was miffed: 

“The devil has been in our way through this thing. We’ve run into roadblocks from members from the intelligence community, the Pentagon,” said Burchett, who has been the subcommittee’s most vocal advocate for investigating UFOs.

 

Burchett cited an example of when he proposed an amendment to the Federal Aviation Administration that would have made pilot reports of UFOs available to Congress, but the bill was never advanced.

 

The amendment, he said, would have required the FAA to report sightings by commercial pilots to Congress.

 

In any case, Rep. Burchett was going to do his damnedest to keep us safe from space aliens, whereas the Republicans could have been focused on cutting Social Security benefits for younger Americans. This is an idea their party is growing fond of. Former Vice President Mike Pence, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, and Gov. Ron DeSantis, all hoping to be the party choice to run for president, have floated the idea of screwing coming generations – apparently hoping they won’t notice because they’re too young to care. 

Right now, we mean. 

(We’ll have more details on the latest indictment after we read it. If you want to know more about the first indictment regarding the Mar-a-Lago documents, we’ve already got that covered.)

Republicans: focusing on real problems!

___ 

 

“Should never be president of the United States.”

August 1, 2023: Donald Trump has run into so many problems lately, that we are sometimes at a loss where to begin. For example, facing a third indictment to start this month, former Vice President Mike Pence lays out his position clearly. 

It’s a position most Americans should be able to grasp – assuming their hats aren’t too tight and cutting off blood to their brains. “Today’s indictment serves as an important reminder: anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States,” he says.

___

 

 

8/2/23: The way this  summer has been going, if Donald Trump finally melted down and went running down the fairway at one of his golf resorts naked, except for golf shoes, it wouldn’t be a total surprise. 

(Well: It would be because no one in the last decade has ever seen him running.)

 

Today, however, let’s start with climate change. Is it real or, as Trump has often said, a “hoax?” To answer that question, a person of even reasonable attention should be trying to look at the evidence.

 

“Longer, stronger and more frequent.” 

First, a few topline numbers: The heat index at the Persian Gulf International Airport on July 16 registered: 

152° F (66.7° C).

 

Then, on August 8, along the southern coast of Iran, there was a heat index reading of: 

158° (70° C).

 

The Persian Gulf, of course, is famously hot – and if you’re the right-wing type convinced that Trump was right, you can slough it off, in any case. You don’t plan to visit the region anytime soon. 

And f**k those Muslims, right! 

Logically, of course, no single datum proves anything. One impossible day at an airport, and another along a coast, prove nothing. But the data continues to accumulate (although in Trumpistan all such data are ignored or misinterpreted). 

What data, you ask? As Scientific American magazine reported this past May, “From North America to South Asia, summer heat waves are becoming longer, stronger and more frequent with climate change.” 

In Western Canada editors noted this past spring that “something exceptional” was happening. “Normally, heat records are broken by a few tenths of a degree,” they explained. “But last week in Canada near Hudson Bay,” which was then still covered in winter ice, “a heat record was broken by a huge 7 degrees Celsius, or more than 12 degrees Fahrenheit.” 

The Province of Alberta, hotter and drier than ever, has been hit for with record-breaking forest fires. On May 9, 88 blazes were burning, and 24,000 people had been driven from their homes. With clouds of smoke creating a haze across the region, one government official admitted, “Tens of thousands of people have been forced from their homes and their jobs. They’re leaving behind all they own, wondering if they will lose everything that they’ve worked for.” 

And, indeed, many did. 

(Smoke from the Canadian fires has since blanketed the air across much of the United States this summer.) 

 

One in a century. 

The evidence accumulates. A study reported in the journal NPJ Climate and Atmospheric Science – which this blogger assumes “Fat Donald” Trump has never read once – also blared warning. Since 1981, growing wheat in some of the finest growing regions in the world has been getting more difficult. Withering heatwaves are now likely to occur in the Midwest, America’s breadbasket, once every six years. 

That compares to once in a century, prior to 1981. 

In China’s best wheat growing region, similar heat waves can be expected every 16 years, vs. once in a hundred.

Erin Coughlan de Perez of Tufts University, the lead author on the study, warned readers, “The historical record is no longer a good representation of what we can expect for the future.”

 

World Weather Attribution, another group of international scientists, chipped in with its own warning. This summer’s broiling heat, they said, would be “virtually impossible” if climate change weren’t factored in. By their estimate, freakishly hot weather in China this summer was made fifty times more likely. Meanwhile, wildfires in Greece, made worse by hotter, drier weather, have driven thousands of tourists to safety, but left many businesses, which rely on tourism, in ashes. 

Trump won’t admit it. His clueless fans won’t see it coming. Nevertheless, the threat from climate change is growing. All of us – but especially our children and grandchildren – are going to pay the price. This past June was the hottest June, globally, ever. On one June day Bangkok, Thailand, hit its highest temperature ever: 105.8° F. The city of Tuong Duong, in Vietnam, also hit a record 111.6° F, as did Luang Prabang, in Laos. 

The record there was 110.3° F. 

 

If your head is stuck up your ass that doesn’t prove it’s nighttime. 

Even worse, a study from the journal Communications Earth & Environment has warned that dangerous levels of heat will occur between three and ten times more often in Southeast Asia by the end of the century.

 

CNBC explains:

 

Tropical regions, including much of Asia, could face double the number of days of “extremely dangerous heat” of 124 degrees Fahrenheit (51 degrees Celsius), according to the study. Asia faces hazards including flooding, drought and typhoons in addition to rising heat and humidity.

 

Again, the data piles up. But you have to be willing to look. You can’t just have your head stuck up your ass, and imagine it’s always nighttime. 

The National Science Foundation has been following worrisome developments regarding the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica. Between 2017 and 2020, satellite images show the ice shelf holding the glacier back from the sea, like a dam, has been “ripped apart.” This has allowed Pine Island to speed up noticeably – another sign that a warming planet will mean rising sea levels. Recent computations show that the glacier is moving at a rate 12% faster than twenty years ago. This doesn’t mean everyone in Miami or Jakarta is about to drown. It is a warning, however, like when a woman finds out she has a lump on her left breast, which might be a sign of cancer. 

On May 17, parts of Northern Italy were hit with freakish rainfall, twenty inches falling in 36 hours. That was equal to about half a normal year’s total. Scientists have repeatedly said that warmer air (otherwise called “climate change”) will  hold more moisture and freak storms will be more common. In Italy, eight people drowned, and 5,000 were forced to abandon their homes. 

The signs multiply. Snow, as a percentage of precipitation, in Lake Tahoe, California has declined from an average of 52% in 1910, to 33% in 2020. The city sits 6,200 feet above sea level. 

Nor do scientists believe conditions will improve any time soon. The World Meteorological Organization warns that the next five years could see record heat levels worldwide. Scientists caution that humanity is facing a 98% chance that one of the next five years will be the hottest ever, and that the five-year period will be the hottest five-year period recorded. 

This blogger is 74, had a heart attack two years ago, and a worrying trip to ICU this past April, the result of a brain bleed. 

He might not be around five years from now. But generations to come are going to face catastrophe if those who run the planet now – and we, ourselves – don’t start getting our acts together.

 

* 

The new figures “are pretty disastrous.” 

UNFORTUNATELY, Republicans refuse to admit we have a problem. In the latest proof that future generations will have to take conservation and environmental protection seriously, we might ponder the predicament of Phoenix, Arizona. 

The suburbs around that city have, until recently, been booming, but Phoenix sits in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. 

Even Trump might be able to figure out where this is headed. More people moving to the area means more demand for water. A 23-year drought and rising temperatures, due to climate change, have exacerbated the problem. Arizona was one of seven western states relying on the Colorado River that were forced recently to agree to cut water usage. In addition, ground water supplies are continually diminished. In some places, the water table is expected to fall by 185 feet over the next century – meaning wells will run dry. “You’re living on borrowed water,” admits Terry Goddard, a former mayor. If climate change gets worse, the people of Phoenix are never going to pay it back. 

The threats to humanity are clear – though not to Donald J. Trump. (As we have noted before, he can’t tell the difference between “weather” and “climate.”) A study using 50 satellites last April – because that’s where science and logic come in – showed that Greenland ice is melting at three times the rate observed thirty years ago. Or, as one climate expert put it, the new figures “are pretty disastrous.” 

So? What should we do? We could reelect Trump who still thinks climate change is a hoax, in 2024. Then we can buy Greenland, like he once suggested, even though Danish leaders called that idea “absurd.” 

(Denmark claims Greenland, going back to the days of Leif Ericson.)

 

Then Donald runs a pipeline through Canada (after we figure out how to build it on giant stilts, over the Labrador Sea), and south from there, to Phoenix, and Canada pays us for the pipeline. 

Problem solved! Like Mexico and the Great Wall of Trump. 

(In the early nineties, ice in Antarctica and Greenland was melting at a rate of 116 billion tons per year. By 2020, the rate was 400 billion tons per year.) 

 

It’s now summer in the Northern Hemisphere and heat records are being shattered in all kinds of places. Data. 

And more data. 

Focusing again on Phoenix, we know that during the “period of record,” covering the years 1896-2020, the city averaged 93 days, annually, of temperatures over 100°. 

Separating out the years from 1991 to 2020, the average rose to 111, and in 2020, there were 145. 

Temps above 110 are also becoming more common. During the period from 1991 to 2020, the first day to top that mark came, on average, a week earlier every spring, than during the entire period of record. For the period of record, the average year saw a dozen days with thermometers topping that mark. In 2020, there were 53 days. The five hottest days ever recorded in that city occurred in 1990 (122), 1995 (121), 1990 (120), 2013 and 2017 (both 119). 

This month the people of Phoenix have been getting their brains broiled daily. On Sunday, July 23, the high in that city topped 110° for the twenty-fourth day in a row. (The old record was eighteen days.) 

Then the city topped 110° again on July 24, and July 25, to run the streak to 26.

 

* 

HOW ABOUT FLORIDA, where Governor Ron DeSantis, only slightly less clueless than Trump, is focused on book banning as a winning campaign issue. 

On July 14, it turned out that the waters off Florida were the hottest ever recorded – in places registering a “staggering” 97 degrees – or what we in Ohio might call “bathtub level.” Hotter waters, of course, supercharge hurricanes, which could bode ill for LGBTQ Floridians and straight Floridians alike. We do know for sure that Farmers Insurance, expecting hurricane damage claims to continue to grow across the Sunshine State, plans to pull coverage in Florida markets. 

So, Sunshine Staters, if your home gets flattened by a hurricane this season – or the next – or the next – and you don’t have insurance coverage, remember, you voted for Trump – who has no plans to address the threat – and you helped elect him twice. Now you’re stuck with a Trump-wannabe governor. If you find yourself left with nothing but the foundation to your home, and whatever personal belongings you can salvage from the wreckage, at least Governor Ron kept you safe from having to share bathrooms with transgender folk. 

Oh, and we have an update! On July 24, a buoy in Manatee Bay, used to measure water temperature, registered 101.1°. 

That followed a reading of 100.2° on July 23, with other buoys in the area also approaching triple-digit territory. 

Need more evidence? There’s always more. In Greece, it was so hot one day in July that the Acropolis was closed to tourists. In Rome, in similar fashion, the Colosseum was closed. To hot for humans. With much of Europe also seeing record highs this summer, zoo keepers in Madrid were trying to keep pandas and other animals cool, by feeding them watermelon popsicles. 

New chapters in this story are being written every year. Only our children and grandchildren will be around to read the book. In 2014, in a “plot twist,” you might say, ice round Antarctica reached an all-time high expanse. Climate change-deniers redoubled their false claims. Nothing to worry about, see! The planet was fine! We needed to drill for more oil, and burn all the coal we could. Besides, windmills caused cancer, and solar energy was a communist plot. Since then, however, the decline of sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere has been uninterrupted. Ice coverage has measured below normal every year, starting in 2016, with 2022 marking a new low. 

So far, 2023 has been worse. Since April, every day has set a record low for that date. On June 27, ice coverage surrounding Antarctica was lower than ever before, with the equivalent of an area twice the size of Texas not choked by ice. 

Finally, let’s wrap it up with the record-setting flooding that destroyed many small Vermont towns last week. Scientists have repeatedly explained. Hotter air means the atmosphere holds more water, and when rains come they often come with new ferocity. In the Green Mountain State, the town of Calais was drenched by 9.2 inches of rain in 24 hours. The capital of the state – which you know you can’t name without googling (Montpelier) – has had three of its four worst floods since 2011. Scientist also note that in the last half century, freak rainfalls (five inches or more) have increased across the Northeastern United States by one hundred percent. 

Flooding will be an increasing problem around the world.

 

Well, “thoughts and prayers,” anyway – the Republican answer for every current day problem, from gun violence to the threat of climate change, to getting Trump back into the White House in miraculous fashion. 

Faced with blistering heat, GOP lawmakers in Arizona, rather than admit climate change was a threat, decided to put the question of what to do in the hands of the legislative chaplain. “We pray, Father,” he intoned, “for solutions to end suffering and for our temperatures to trend downwards to provide relief for so many in harm’s way.” 

Amen. 

Problem solved! 

In July, the average temperature in Arizona, including both days and nights, was 102, seven degrees warmer than normal. 

Election-denier, climate-denier, reality-denier Kari Lake announced that Democrats only wanted to create “mass hysteria” so they could rule the world and make all patriots grovel before the altar of Joe Biden.

 

*

__________ 

Graziano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two Bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them they are not worth the search. 

Shakespeare

__________

SO, let’s just say that Republicans aren’t going to focus on saving our children from the threat of a broiling planet in their futures. They are going to save them from Shakespeare! In Florida, where book banning is a growing fad, Hillsborough County teachers have been notified that they may only use specific excerpts from The Bard. 

Because? 

Teachers have been warned not to violate the “Don’t Say Gay” law, by broaching taboo topics. Students will now be allowed to read parts of Macbeth, Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet – but not the full plays. 

And the ultimate irony? As The Hill reports: “Another reason for the change is the new state curriculum and exam standards … Before, students had to read two full novels or plays, but changes have been made due to the new Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking [emphasis added] standards.

FUN FACT: Donald Trump and the Republicans also want to save America from the scourge of “woke soccer,” after the U.S. team made an early exit from the Women’s World Cup tournament. Rated #1 in the world, going in, the national team was defeated in a shootout (a stupid way to decide any game) by Sweden, ranked #3. The only explanation for this defeat had to be – according to the former president, who was glad to see a U.S. team taste defeat – was that our athletes were “woke.” 

Otherwise, no #3 seed in a soccer tournament could ever have defeated a #1. Trump explained it this way:

The MAGA faithful (not exactly known for being huge soccer fans, anyway) will doubtless fail to notice that Sweden was later knocked out of the tournament, as well. And Germany, #2 entering the World Cup, also got the early bounce. 

Because it’s not “woke” soccer, knuckleheads. It’s soccer – and sometimes really good teams get upset. 

(A normal former president would be proud of the effort these dedicated women showed.)

___

8/6/23: Here, in reality, where this blogger lives, he notices this bit of news, regarding the coming trials of Donald John Trump. Regarding his indictment for trying to steal the 2020 election, his own former Attorney General Bill Barr now says he is willing to testify against his old boss. 

Suck on that lemon, MAGA heads. 

Asked on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” if he would be willing, Barr responded, “Of course.” He also noted that on three separate occasions, he told President Trump “in no uncertain terms, that there was no evidence of fraud that would have changed the outcome” of the 2020 election.

* 

IN OTHER NEWS, Donald is raging again, in the wake of his third indictment. This time, he attacks Rep. Nancy Pelosi, using language beneath the dignity of any elected official. 

That is: No surprise, coming from Lardo from Mar-a-Lago:

* 

TRUMP’S not the only Republican who has an axe to grind – and then bury in the back of a another. Former Congressman Mo Brooks, who spoke from the same platform as Trump on January 6, 2021, has long since soured on the charlatan from Florida. Brooks has said that the former president asked him to ignore the Constitution, and break the law, so that Trump could grab a second term in office. 

Now, Brooks is backing Pence for President 2024. After Trump insults his former VP, Brooks responds:

___

8/8/23: Election Day in Ohio? Yes, indeed. In an attempt to pull a fast one on the people, Republican lawmakers decide to hold a special election, at a cost of $25 million. Voters will have only one decision to make – to vote “yes,” or “no” on Issue 1. Issue 1 will change the way the state constitution is amended, altering a system in place for over a century. No longer will citizens vote on amendments by majority rule. If Issue 1 passes, it will require 60% of voters to approve any amendment. 

First, we should note that Issue 1 got trampled. 

57% of voters chose “no.” 

43% said “yes.” 

Coming in November is a ballot initiative to amend the Ohio Constitution and protect a woman’s right to choose. 

Now, it’s almost certain to pass, by a similar margin. 

Naturally, Kari Lake, Imaginary Governor of Arizona, who was in Ohio trying to drum up support for the “yes” side, accepted defeat graciously! 

Fake out! Of course she didn’t. Lake immediately said the election was rigged – which is fun – since elections in Ohio are run currently be Republican elected officials.

Voters pummeled Issue 1.

 

P.S. Kari Lake never said the 2020 election in Ohio was rigged, when Trump won by an 8-point margin.

___

 

8/9/23: Wednesday night, Fatso from Mar-a-Lago makes an appearance on Newsmax, and tells host Eric Bolling all about how it’s so wrong he’s being indicted for trying to steal the 2020 election. Bolling’s job is not to ask questions, but to let viewers listen to Trump rant, and fill their heads with pudding. 

At one point, the former president angrily insists, “I believe I won that election by many, many votes, many, many hundreds of thousands of votes. That’s what I think.” 

First, Trump is hedging his comment a bit – to say, “that’s what I think.” He’s looking at using a First Amendment defense in his coming trials, and so, if he expresses his views as an opinion (as here), it might help. 

Bolling doesn’t care if it’s true or not. But he has to come back after a commercial break at the end of his program. “All right, folks, now just to note: Newsmax has accepted the election results as legal and final.”  

The channel is being sued for defamation, after helping spread the lie that Dominion Voting Systems had helped rig the election.

 

* 

IN OTHER NEWS, the F.B.I. shoots and kills Craig Deleeuw Robertson, after the Utah man makes death threats against President Biden. Agents were serving a search warrant at the suspect’s home when gunfire erupted. 

With Biden scheduled to visit the state, Robertson posted on social media, “I hear Biden is coming to Utah. Digging out my old ghillie suit and cleaning the dust off the M24 sniper rifle.”

___

 

8/12/23: You don’t have to believe this blogger, or President Biden, when they tell you Donald Trump is a danger to this nation (and the world). Former Congressman Will Hurd, running – with no hope – for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, is blunt. 

Trump, he says, is a “loser,” a “liar,” and even worse, a “national security threat.” In fact, Hurd says, he’s only running for office again, because if he can dupe the voters and win another term, he can “stay out of prison.” (See also: Mike Pence, August 1, above.)

___

8/14/23: Donald John Trump and eighteen co-conspirators get indicted for all kinds of election fraud in Georgia. Among the crimes charged: perjury, witness intimidation, and obstruction of justice.

We are covering this topic of indictments in a separate series of posts, titled: The Orange God and the Cult.

Part II, Part III, Part XXI, etc.

FUN FACT: Some people believe climate change is not a threat. Those people are ill-informed louts. 

In Canada, for the second year in a row, hotter, drier conditions have led to historic wildfires. As of today, there are 1,100 active fires across the land, and the Canadian military has been called out to help. So far, with plenty of time for the fires still to burn, 33.4 million acres have been reduced to blackened wasteland, the worst fire season in that nation’s history. That’s more or less equivalent to setting a match to the entire State of Louisiana.

___

 

8/15/23: Florida health officials are warning residents of Broward and Miami-Dade counties that one of the four variants of the dengue fever virus has been found in mosquitoes. Luckily, there is a vaccine that offers protection. 

Unfortunately, most MAGA types no longer believe in vaccines. So go catch dengue fever and see how it goes! Most people do recover, but the pain that can result from dengue fever has led to it being called “breakbone fever.” 

Avoid the vaccines!!! Who needs fingers?

Also, there has been a leprosy outbreak in Florida. Go figure! 

There’s a vaccine for that, too, but tried and true anti-vaxxers would rather have their fingers and noses rot off than get shots.

___

8/17/23: If you obsess over presidential polling, like this blogger (a retired teacher with time to spare) you know that Joe Biden’s approval ratings are in the dumpster. That doesn’t mean most Americans want to see a return of Lardo from Mar-a-Lago. An Associated Press poll, released today, notes that 53% of Americans say they will definitely NOT support him in 2024. Another 11% say the probably” won’t. 

The MAGA faithful, not exactly known for their skill with deciphering simple math, look at those numbers and congratulate themselves. 

“We’ve got the overwhelming majority on our side,” they shout. “It’s gonna be another landslide for Lardo.”

___

8/25/23: Republicans have been trying to score points with dumb people by beating up Joe Biden on gas prices. When prices ballooned, after the world economy began to recover from two years of dramatically slower business and travel, due to COVID, they blamed Joe like he was pumping the gas himself. Then prices declined for a year but none of the Republicans credited him for that. Now prices are rising again, largely because of the war in Ukraine. That means it’s fashionable again for GOP presidential candidates to insist that Democrats have been crushing America’s oil producing companies. 

That is why only four times has annual oil production in the U.S. exceeded more than four million barrels. Trump did it twice, in 2019 and 2020. (He barely missed in 2018.) Biden has now done it twice, in 2021 and 2022. Almost as if Democrats didn’t try to squelch oil production. 

Ironically, under George W. Bush, who rose to fame as a Texas oil tycoon, in eight years, the best he did was 2.1 million barrels annually. Then Obama took over and production soared to 3.4 million barrels in 2015. 

And, what the heck, let’s hear it for Abe Lincoln. In 1861, he was the first president to see annual U.S. oil production surpass 2,000 barrels. 

Two years earlier, total production under James Buchanan – a Democrat, of course – was only 2.

___ 

8/29/23: The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare announce the first ten drugs that will be subject to price negotiations, or, as Big Pharma might describe it: “Commies taking over America!” 

Under the Inflation Reduction Act, passed by the Biden administration, the drug companies won’t he able to keep raising prices on widely used drugs – like insulin, which Type-1 diabetics must have to live. Prices for certain blood thinners, diabetes medications, and drugs for heart conditions will be subject to negotiation, with many of Medicare’s 65 million patients being affected. 

Kind of like Biden has a health plan that passed, whereas Trump came up with a pocket full of stardust.

In the U.S. House of Representatives, in 2022, 211 Republicans had a chance to vote for or against the issue. All but four voted “no.” 

The other four decided not to vote at all. 

(In 2022, the eight largest Big Pharma players made $110 billion in profits – but paid just $2 billion in taxes.)

___

8/30/23: The Labor Department is proposing a new rule that would increase coverage for salaried workers not currently eligible for overtime pay – because Donald Trump and his crew blocked the last effort by Democrats to increase the number of salaried workers covered by the 40-hour standard. 

Team Obama suggested raising the limit to $47,476 in 2016, but GOP lawmakers stymied the increase. 

Three years later, Team Trump decided that $35,576 was enough for any worker to live on – so that a person making $665 per week, and perhaps putting in 50 hours as an assistant manager at a Dollar General store, should be feeling pretty sweet about making $13.30 per hour, and no overtime at all. 

The same assistant manager could work 70 hours per week, and make even less per hour. Team Trump didn’t care. 

If Team Biden has its way, however any salaried worker earning under $55,000 will soon qualify for overtime pay. 

Expect Big Business allies in Congress – namely, garden variety Republican dopes – to fight it all the way.

___ 

 

8/31/23: If Republicans aren’t working overtime to protect our grannies from Obama death panels, our Christmas greetings from godless Democrats, and our bodies from cancer-causing windmills, now “Sleepy Joe” Biden is coming after our beers. 

Fortunately, Sen. Ted Cruz is ready to start shooting if anyone touches his drink. 

You probably don’t know this – because like me, you may not be a model of good health habits. But the health experts currently recommend no more than two alcoholic drinks daily for American men and for women an average of one. 

Now,  George Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, has suggested that we may someday move in the direction of the recommendations of the Canadian government – two drinks per week. Well, Sen. Cruz is wide awake and he can hear jackboots in the streets! The Beer Nazis are on the march – and they might someday recommend we drink less, and also recommend we lose weight, because, frankly, if you look around in any bar, the average American is packing some lard. 

In plain fact, none of us have to listen – let alone act upon any recommendations, which have not…um…even been made. 

So, Ted, you can relax. And to be blunt you could stand to lose a few pounds, yourself. You’re looking like Donald Trump.

___ 

 

September 1, 2023: Donald Trump starts the month as the most-indicted former President of the United States ever – with four indictments to his name. 

He broke the record of three in mid-August, a record he had held since breaking it at two to start that month.

      

 

He also set the record at one. And he may not even be done!

* 

ACCORDING to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. economy added 187,000 jobs in August – which would be just slightly better than the 185,858 jobs added monthly under Donald Trump in the first 37 full months he was president – and that would be before COVID hit. 

You can argue that Biden is only gaining back jobs Trump created, which were then snuffed out due to COVID, but you would have to be math deficient to if you did. Subject to slight revision, Mr. Biden has seen 1,884,0 286,214 00 jobs added to the economy in 2023, or 235,500 per month. 

Fourteen months ago, unemployment fell to 3.5%, as low as it ever fell under Lardo from Mar-a-Lago. 

It has fluctuated since, dropping as low as 3.4% in January of this year; but in those fourteen months, when all the jobs had been regained, beyond doubt, Biden has averaged 286,214 jobs gained per month. 

That’s the math.

___ 

 

9/5/23: Also having a difficult start to the month: Trump co-conspirator in the Georgia indictment,  Jeffrey Clark! After a former colleague at the Department of Justice suggested that Jeff was in extremely warm judicial water, Clark attacked his critic for attending the Burning Man Music Festival, held annually in the Nevada desert. In Clark’s words, it was a “neopagan ritual,” and our nation was in danger unless we all “repent” and “turn to the Lord,” and if we end up on his jury, we find him innocent. 

To get a flavor of Clark’s thinking, facing his legal dilemmas, he had previous insisted that his indictment was the work of “witches, spiritists, mediums, those with spirit animals, and Ukrainian NPCs.” 

(The blogger is too lazy to look up what “NPCs” are.)

___ 

 

9/6/23: We learn, by way of ABC, that former President Donald J. Trump was warned in May 2022, long before his abode at Mar-a-Lago was raided, that if he did not comply with a subpoena, then, yes, F.B.I. agents might visit. 

How do we know? 

His lead lawyer in the matter, Evan Corcoran, kept audio notes, and those recordings were later obtained by Special Prosecutor Jack Smith under a subpoena. Just minutes after warning Mr. Trump, Mr. Corcoran had a conversation with another lawyer, who had been told that the former president “would go ballistic” if pushed to comply. 

Court subpoena? Fuck that shit! 

When Corcoran joined Trump’s legal team in April 2022, more than 200 classified documents had already been found in fifteen boxes Donald had reluctantly returned to the National Archives. The Justice Department believed he was holding on to more and sent a subpoena on May 11. Soon after, Corcoran and a second Trump lawyer, Jennifer Little, flew to Florida. During a meeting with their client, the former president talked about all many grievances. Corcoran and Little tried to focus discussion on the boxes (several dozen, we now know) that Trump still had in his possession. Corcoran warned Donald that if he failed to comply he could be “held in contempt” by the courts. 

Trump wondered, “What happens if we just don’t respond at all or we don’t play ball with them?” 

The feds could get a search warrant and show up on Donald’s door, Corcoran explained. 

According to ABC News, 

The indictment says that although Corcoran – who ABC News believes to be “Attorney 1” in the indictment – and Little – believed to be “Attorney 2” – “told Trump that they needed to search for documents that would be responsive to the subpoena and provide a certification that there had been compliance with the subpoena,” Trump still insisted to them, “I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes,” and, “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”

 

BLOGGER: Me, me, me! I know the answer. It’s, “No, you Orange Nitwit.” That would be obstruction of justice. 

In fact, according to Corcoran’s audio notes, recorded at the time, other attorneys were telling him, as well as Little, “that there’s no way he’s going to agree to anything, and that he was going to deny that there were any more boxes at all.” 

(That’s exactly what the indictment charges Trump did.)

 

During their meeting on May 23, Corcoran and Trump agreed that he and Little would return in two weeks, and search for classified materials. 

As soon as the two lawyers hopped on a plane and left, Trump began figuring out how to hide everything he could. 

You could almost excuse most of this as a crime of stupidity – save for the fact that highly sensitive secret documents were involved. 

And it was a crime to keep them at Mar-a-Lago. 

And lying about having them was a form of obstruction of justice, which is another pretty obvious crime. 

And – for Trump – it only gets worse. Prosecutors have long claimed they have video proof, showing Walt Nauta, a Trump aide, moving more than five dozen boxes around the Florida estate, like a game of “Hide-n-Seek,” only involving highly classified materials. When investigators began sniffing about, Nauta said he didn’t know anything about the boxes, and an employee who knew how the security camera system at the Trump estate worked said, yeah, don’t ask me about any boxes. 

Never saw them, or heard about them, or saw Walt move them around, which I didn’t see on surveillance videos. 

That employee, Yuscil Taveras, has now agreed to cooperate with investigators. In July 2023, he testified before a grand jury and said that he had been asked by Nauta, and another Trump employee, Carlos de Oliviera, to see if he could delete surveillance footage from the property. 

And that is how you can get hit with a charge of “conspiracy.” 

Innocent until proven guilty, true. But Trump better hope he gets elected again, and then he better hope the U.S. Supreme Court agrees that he has the power to pardon himself. He’s going to need it. 

 

* 

OUR TOPIC TODAY is “clueless nitwits,” which means there’s been a Mike Huckabee sighting! 

On a positive note, Mike is looking svelte these days. 

He’s battled weight before. 

Thick or thin, on his show today, the former Arkansas governor offered up his nitwit opinion on the former president’s burgeoning legal problems. If the rule of law – Mike doesn’t use that term, of course – were to be applied to Donald, and that kept him from running, or winning again, then 2024 “is going to be the last American election that will be decided by ballots rather than bullets.”

___ 

 

9/8/23: It’s not often that this blogger can say that he agrees with former Vice President Dick Cheney. But today, he does. 

As Mr. Cheney now warns: 

In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump”

 

He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He was a coward. A real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters. He lost his election and he lost big. I know it. He knows it. And deep down, I think most Republicans know it.

___

9/9/23: Kari Lake, the Imaginary Governor of Arizona, has now decided to double as the Imaginary Attorney General of the United States. 

Even though real judges and juries have convicted 809 January 6 rioters so far, and most of those rioters have said they rioted for one or more of the reasons listed below, Ms. Lake is convinced the whole attack was a  “staged” riot to cover up the fact that lawmakers were going to certify a stolen election. 

1.     We rioted because Trump begged us to come to D.C., or we wouldn’t have a country anymore.

2.     Civil war is coming, and we must save America by killing other Americans. The ones who don’t wear red caps.

3.     Fox News told us the election was stolen and we believed Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, because they are patriots!

4.     “Q” of QAnon told us we had to save America – something about Jews drinking children’s blood.

5.     The commies piled up 7,000,000 more votes than we did. So those votes had to be rigged.

6.     We came because we hate minorities of all varieties (we already mentioned Jews) and we must stomp them like bugs before they take over this country and make it impossible for America to be great again.

7.     Also: predominantly white and Christian.

___

 

9/10/23: Trump’s problems, related to mishandling of classified documents may or may not have grown worse this weekend. NBC has now revealed the existence of an unknown office on North Flagler Avenue, in West Palm Beach, Florida. The office also contains boxes of material from Donald’s days as president. 

Oddly enough, the office bears no name on the door, or on the hallway nameplate. It’s funded by taxpayers (as is fitting under U.S. law), but Trump’s website doesn’t list it anywhere. 

(It’s a ten-minute drive from Mar-a-Lago.) 

Even odder, a private firm was tasked with searching the premises for secret documents – probably not the smartest move, unless those doing the searching had the highest security clearances. 

It could be nothing more than the fact that Trump is a packrat. The question: Is he a criminal packrat? It doesn’t help his defense, regarding the mishandling of top secret document at Mar-a-Lago, if it proves true – as newspaper reports indicate – that at least one box at Flagler was later removed by federal agents. Inside were presidential schedules with classified markings.

___

 

 9/11/23: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene decided that the best way to honor the loss our country suffered on this date, twenty-two years ago, was to suggest a little secession. After attacking President Biden’s border policies, she tweeted this brilliant idea: “If the Biden admin refuses to stop the invasion of cartel led human and drug trafficking into our country, states should consider seceding from the union.” 

Make America Great Again – April 12, 1861, style!

Dancing on the Stars and Stripes in 1861.

FUN FACT: Rep. Greene’s 2020 campaign manager and senior political advisor, Isaiah Wartman has been slapped for running a fake charity, he and an accomplice have been ordered to repay $22,077.48 in donations that did not go to… 

Charity.

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9/12/23: You can’t say Donald Trump doesn’t have powerful friends in politics, who want to help him. 

Such as: Vladimir Putin. 

Today, the Russian killer provided sympathetic assessment of Trump’s current legal situation. “What’s happening with Trump is a persecution of a political rival for political motives,” Vlad said. 

Next, Putin suggests Trump throw his enemies off fifth floor balconies if he can manage to get reelected. 

Or, better yet, put poison in their underpants.

Still buddies after all these years.

FUN FACT: Tim Gurner, the Australian multimillionaire (worth an estimated $929 million) is miffed to discover that in this post-COVID economy, the average worker is not as willing to take orders from the Fat Cats and accept whatever pay the Cats decide they want to give them. In an interview he insists that unemployment needs to increase by 40-50%, to humble the grasping workers, and remind them they work for the employer, and not the other way around. Employees, he grumbles, feel like companies are lucky to have them and it needs to be turned the other way around. Otherwise, people like Gurner might not be able to keep piling up all those millions!

 

FUN FACT #2: Although Gurner hasn’t managed to crack the list of the world’s billionaires, we can note that in 2022, globally, 2,640 individuals had, and combined, they were worth an estimated $12.2 trillion dollars. 

That would mean that each billionaire had, on average, $4,545,454,545.45 cents. Put that another way. Even if every billionaire failed to make profits in 2023, they could still spend a million dollars every day, and at the end of the year, they’d still have $4,180,454,545.45 left. 

  You'd have to be patient. It would take you two days to pay for this car:
the 1,114 horsepower Hispano Suiza Carmen Boulogne.
For $1.9 million you could go from 0 to 60 in 2.6 seconds.

(I think we can all agree: The average worker needs to be humbled.)

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9/13/23: Some people believe in climate change, and other people are numbskulls. The scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have just reported that the U.S. has already experienced 23 billion dollar-plus weather and climate disasters, with almost four months to go this year. 

That’s the new record. 

Adjusted for today’s prices, and starting in 1980, NOAA reports that on average the U.S. was battered 8.1 times per year. 

From 2018 to 2022, however, the average has been 18. As experts have warned, hotter daily temperatures will dry out the land – leading to disasters like the fire that swept Maui. Hotter ocean waters will turbocharge hurricanes like Idalia. Warmer air can hold more moisture – and freak rainstorms will be increasingly common, as with Tropical Storm Hillary, which flooded parts of California and several neighboring states. 

According to NOAA, this past July was the hottest recorded in 174 years of record keeping, breaking the record set in 2021, and probably the hottest month on record. In fact, the last 533 months have all seen temperatures that have surpassed the Twentieth Century average. 

And if you need more scientists to help convince you something is going on around the world, NASA also calls July the hottest month on record, those records going all the way back to 1880. 

Also worried: the scientists at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. 

Second hottest month, across the Northern Hemisphere, ever recorded? According to the World Meteorological Organization, that would be: August 2023. 

The world’s oceans, which have absorbed most of the excess heat generated by human activity in the last three centuries, were also warmer than ever before, and set records for three months in succession.

That’s the basic science.

THESE DOPES DON'T AGREE.

 

In Canada, hotter, drier conditions have led to historic wildfires – for the second year in a row. As of today, there are 900 active fires across the land, and the Canadian military has been called out to help. So far, with plenty of time for the fires yet to burn, 42.7 million acres have been incinerated. That’s more or less equivalent to setting a match to the entire State of Florida.

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Or, better yet, put poison in their underpants.

___

Sen. Tim Scott: “Let the workers eat cake.”  

NEW TODAY (9/19/23): If you think Republicans care about the average American worker, you need to pay more attention to the news. We have long known that Lardo from Mar-a-Lago enjoys hiring undocumented immigrant workers because Lardo can pay them less than American-born employees – and also cheat Social Security out of contributions. Down in Texas, Governor Gregg Abbott is all in on stopping illegal immigrants from crossing the border. But in Texas – which he and his party govern – undocumented workers are welcomed with open arms and fill an estimated 1.1 million jobs. It’s kind of like that line in Field of Dreams: “If you pay them to build it, they will come, and if you don’t check their papers when you hire them, it’s on you.” 

Don’t blame Joe Biden. 

By the way, this blogger has a great deal of respect for immigrants of all colors, shapes, and sizes. His Irish ancestors were once viewed as a grave threat to this country, and his grandmother even got a cross burned on her lawn in the 1920s. But, my god, the hypocrisy! GOP leaders baffle their supporters with bullshit about “invasions,” and the dire need for “border walls” if we want to be safe. 

To put it clearly, the Big Business folks who almost always back GOP candidates and causes happily hire undocumented workers to cut up meat, put up drywall in high-rises, and would hire them to build the border wall, so long as they could pay them less than native-born workers would expect.

 

On Monday, speaking to a campaign audience, Sen. Tim Scott was asked about the United Auto Workers strike. What did he think of those folks trying to pry a few more dollars out of the grasping hands of Big Business and dig out of billionaires’ pockets? If he were elected president, a listener wondered, would he insert himself into labor talks? 

(President Biden has said he supports the auto workers’ demands.)

 

In keeping with the Republican brand, but oddly off target in his answer, he replied, “I think Ronald Reagan gave us a great example when federal employees decided they were going to strike. He said, you strike, you’re fired. Simple concept to me. To the extent that we can use that once again, absolutely.” 

Marie Antoinette couldn’t have said it more clearly. F. U., UAW strikers. If you can’t afford bread, eat cake.

True: The queen's comment did not go over well.